Early Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis improves long-term child development and families'ability to cope with this disorder. Latino children are diagnosed with ASDs at older ages and at the point of more severe symptoms, putting them and their families at significant disadvantage. Interventions addressing family, community, and health care systems factors hold promise for improving access to ASD diagnostic services for minority children. The goal of this project is to develop an evidence-based intervention to reduce ethnic differences in ASD care among Latinos. To accomplish this goal, we will develop a survey of 350 Latino parents of either typically-developing children or children with ASDs, to assess common beliefs about autism in Latino communities, and to assess which community factors, health beliefs, and health care system factors are associated with delays in ASD diagnosis. The survey will be conducted at three sites within the Autism Treatment Network: Oregon Health &Science University in Portland, Oregon;University of Colorado/The Children's Hospital in Denver;and University of Pennsylvania/Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Based on the barriers found in the survey, we will develop a pilot community-based patient navigator intervention designed to reduce barriers to care. This research will be incorporated into a career development plan that includes increasing the Principal Investigator's knowledge and skills in the areas of autism diagnosis and treatment, mental health disparities, interventional study design, and community-based research. The results of this research will be published in peer-reviewed journals and used as the basis for an NIH-funded proposal to conduct a multi-site test of the intervention designed in this project. Over 120,000 U.S. Latino children have been diagnosed with an ASD, a figure that likely underestimates the true prevalence. This project will help such children achieve earlier diagnosis and better long-term prognosis.

Public Health Relevance

The goal of this project is to develop an evidence-based intervention to improve rates of early diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders in Latino children. We will achieve this goal through surveying Latino parents to identify barriers to care and then developing a pilot patient navigator intervention designed to reduce the barriers that we identified. This research will be incorporated into a career development plan that includes increasing the Principal Investigator's knowledge and skills in the areas of autism diagnosis and treatment, mental health disparities, interventional study design, and community-based research.